HALLOWEEN: New Film Will Address The Sequels While Also Ignoring Them, Says McBride

David Gordon Green and Danny McBride are hoping to pull off something that others have tried and failed at with the new Halloween they’re working on:

Making a sequel to an earlier film in a series, while ignoring its later sequels.

A high-profile example of this concept would be Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns. Singer and his writers basically made the film as if it were “the real Superman III,” and basically asked audiences to forget that the Richard Pryor-starring third film and Superman IV: The Quest For Peace of the Christopher Reeve films ever happened.

The result was a misfire in terms of the way it confused audiences and failed to actually course-correct the old series. Superman ended up getting the reboot treatment in the form of Man of Steel.

Green and McBride hope to succeed with their Halloween where Singer failed with Superman Returns. Yet their situation is even trickier, really. While Singer had the benefit of the fact that Superman had been left dormant, cinematically-speaking, since part IV had come out, in their case, the film they want to continue from got seven sequels, and a reboot, and the reboot got a sequel!

So this will be the 11th Halloween movie, spanning totally different continuities, and their biggest star, Jamie Lee Curtis, was killed off!

Still, McBride has a positive outlook on it, and some interesting things to say about how he intends to handle all of that.

“This picks up after the first one. The Halloween franchise has kind of become a little bit of like choose your own adventure, you know, like there’s so many different versions, and the timeline is so mixed up,” McBride said of the fine mess the series has found itself in. “We just thought it would be easier to go back to the source and continue from from there,” he told Flickering Myth. “It was nicer than knowing you’re working on Halloween 11. It just seemed cooler. ‘We’re making Halloween 2.’”

As for how they intend to wipe the slate clean of all that’s gone on in the 40 years since John Carpenter first unleashed Michael Myers on us, it sounds like they may have a clever trick up his sleeve.

“We do [reference the other movies]. For fans, we pay homage and respect to every Halloween that has been out there,” McBride teases.

And that gets my creative juices flowing, and gets my mind racing a bit. What could that mean? How do you say “We’re making Halloween 2. Ignore everything else,” but still pay homage to the nine other movies?

One quick way to address it that I thought of is simply having another denizen of Haddonfield go up to Laurie Strode (Curtis) and say, “I heard you died.” She could then reply, “You can’t believe everything youhear.” They can play it off as a “These things have a habit of taking on lives of their own, especially in a small town where nothing crazy ever happens” kind of way, essentially saying that the sequels were people’s attempts to add to the lore, but nothing more.

Still, I’m curious about the film’s title. Will they pull the trigger and call it Halloween 2? As of now, every report on the matter refers to it simple as Halloween. Or might they go with a subtitle of sorts? I think that’d be troublesome, since the last two mainline films went that route, with Halloween: H20 and Halloween: Resurrection. If they’re going for a clean break, then something simple is the way to go.

But if they call it, simply, Halloween then that could make jaded viewers think it’s just another remake/reboot.

Another upcoming example of a film that’s trying to sequelize an earlier movie while ignoring the rest is Tim Miller’s upcoming Terminator– which will take place after T2: Judgement Day. It’ll be interesting to see if these movies find success, or if they just muddy the waters. To this day, debates rage on about where- exactly- Superman Returns fits in the continuity of the original films, or if it even does at all.

What do you think of this approach? Can it work, or is it just confusing? Let me know, down below!

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Mario-Francisco Robles

Editor-In-Chief and Co-Founder of Revenge of The Fans. Previously, he's written for Latino-Review, IGN, Moviehole, and The Splash Report. In late-2017, with the popularity of his solo endeavor (the El Fanboy Podcast) reaching an all-time high, he decided it was time to launch a proper site for his scoops and analysis. Welcome to RTF!

“…Carpenter is fairly intimately involved.” No, I don’t buy it. They cut him a check so they can say he’s attached to the project; that’s what I think is going on. Green and McBride pitched him their idea and Carpenter said he liked it. How enthusiastic he actually was or was not, I’ll leave it to your readers to decide. The one and only specific job on this film credited to Carpenter is the score. According to Carpenter, he’s “bringing along” his son and godson. In other words, his sons are adapting the original score. Carpenter’s involvement will be limited at best.

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Mario-Francisco Robles

That flies in the face of reports he himself has validated; Reports that say they sent him the script and accepted his notes.

So he’s also involved creatively.

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batman144144

Surely, you don’t believe Carpenter is above painting the rosiest picture possible? Like I said, I’ll leave the judgement of how involved Carpenter is to your readers. I don’t buy it. It’s PR designed to get you excited for a franchise that hasn’t had any interest since at least 1998’s H2O. According to Carpenter himself, he lost interest in it after the first film. The only reason he and Deborah Hill ever made a sequel was to recoup money he felt they’d not been paid doing the original. “Being nice capitalists, we decided to go ahead and do that…I sat down to write the sequel and realized there’s no story here. We’ve done the story. All we’re doing is xeroxing.” When Miramax was prepping the 6th film, he made an aside on the sequels’ sub-standard quality and said, “It’s kind of sad.”

He’s in it for the paycheck. It’s been that way since the first sequel. His involvement with this one will be minimal.

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Mario-Francisco Robles

I hear you, and I understand your cynicism and skepticism.

But I’ve been keeping an eye on all of this, and I watched a great 60 Minutes piece on him that aired on CBS a couple of months ago. He acknowledges that the sequels were pointless and that he had wanted to try new things (hence Halloween 3 with NO Michael Myers), and he noted how uninvolved he was with everything beyond that point. I’ve also read the hilariously dry quotes about why the only reason he likes the sequels is because he gets to put out his hand and have a check dropped into it. Cracks me up. And I get it.

But in this case, he’s gone out of his way- something he doesn’t have to do- to compliment the filmmakers and outline the way in which they pursued him, presented him with the script, asked for feedback, and wanted his “blessing,” so to speak. They kissed the ring, and I think he appreciated that.

You should check out the linked article I put into the words “intimately involved.” He sounds like he’s softened a bit and like returning to this world to right some earlier wrongs is appealing to him.

You may be right, of course. But I’m just choosing to take him at his word, with all that I know of the situation, and think of him as being genuinely intrigued at the possibility of creating a true follow-up.

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batman144144

Yes, I understand. Your comments are more than reasonable. Maybe he really is seeing the end of his days before him and he wants to contribute something before his time comes……….I still don’t think so, though. In my opinion, if he really were as interested as the studio and Carpenter himself were trying to portray, he would, at the *very* least, be a co-writer, or “Story by.” I’m not trying to be stubborn; that’s my honest take.

No, I wasn’t aware of a 60 Minutes interview. I will have to track that down. Hey, maybe he’ll change my mind…

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Revenge of the Fans is a nerd-leaning news, analysis, and enjoyment project. The site was started in early 2018, in the dark days before anyone on the Internet had anything to say about comic book movies or pop culture. The site was the idea of Mario Francisco Robles, a man with his finger on the pulse of the comic book movie industry, and Jon, a person who we aren’t completely sure isn’t a figment of Mario’s imagination.